In case you haven’t heard, the Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center is considering a change in its free structure. Instead of a combined price of $12.00 for an adult admission to the film and Cyclorama, the proposed change is a flat rate of $7.50 for admission to the exhibits as well as the movie and Cyclorama presentation. The NPS website has more details.

Protests to the contrary, I can state with a fair degree of professional certainty that $7.50 is quite reasonable for admission to a large museum. Furthermore, a lot of NPS sites already charge flat admission fees, visitors who want to see the film and the Cyclorama will save money, and the battlefield itself will still be free. Why should any of this be controversial?

2 responses to “Fee proposal at Gettysburg”

Trying to sneak the fee rise past a non media watching Labor day weekend with a public meeting in only a few weeks the public comment ending a few weeks later sends red flags by itself

No fees were promised as part of the fee structure from the start. The entire sales pitch was for the Museum was that it would be free. I believe the Park Service has it in writing that this is not to happen in the Parks General Management plan.

Where dose this Private Foundation get the power to re write park service policy? Who gave the green light for pushing this Idea that should have been rejected.

If the film and Cyclorama were priced at 5$ the public would pay and the Foundation would make the $ it needed.
To now u-turn is wrong!

Private groups who support public museums often have a significant amount of leeway in helping to shape institutional policy. Implementing a fee change based on differences between projections and outcomes isn’t necessarily a betrayal of trust; sometimes it’s just unavoidable.

Personally, I don’t think any of this would be an issue if it weren’t for the previous uproar over the interpretive techniques used in the exhibit. People are applying nefarious motives where there’s a much simpler explanation.